


Better Days (Are Not So Far Away)

by VJR22_6



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Child Injury, Earthquakes, Family Fluff, Gen, minor injury, yes there is a seven month gap between chapters do not judge me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22450738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VJR22_6/pseuds/VJR22_6
Summary: A normal family outing would perhaps include an outing to a museum. A McDuck family outing includes finding museum treasures in underground caverns.Which would be all well and grand if there hadn't been an earthquake.
Relationships: Della Duck & Dewey Duck, Della Duck & Huey Duck, Della Duck & Louie Duck, Della Duck & Webby Vanderquack, Scrooge McDuck & Webby Vanderquack
Comments: 9
Kudos: 56





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back gaymers!!!! I hope you all like this. I've had the idea for the second chapter specifically bouncing around my head for quite some time now. I finally got the first chapter for you guys, I hope you like it. I want to be writing, it's just that life gets in the way sometimes.
> 
> Title for this fic taken from Hedley's "Better Days."
> 
> ((EDIT(1.5.21): Hello again!!! Apologies for my absence. I've been in the process of escaping an abusive household over the last few months and my writing style's evolved a touch, so this fic's been a tough one to figure out how to continue! Rest assured though, the finale IS coming. I'm making a few edits for punctuation and pacing--namely on a few lines of dialogue--but none of the content is going to change. Anyway, thanks a lot for your comments, I appreciate them a ton!))

The wind whistles through the caves, a haunting song of loneliness that would send shivers down the toughest spine. It’s cold down so deep, and terribly dark, but that’s where adventures are found. In the dark heart of these particular caves lies a beautiful statuette of the moon, and it’s attracted none other than Della Duck herself, kids in tow.

She brandishes a torch down the dark corridor, leading the way with a grin like the Cheshire. The call of adventure is so sweet to hear, after so many years of silence.

Dewey is right by her side. He’s got the same smile, a brilliant look of wonder and joy in his eyes. He’s got the bug his mother does, that drive to explore and discover all the things the world has to offer. His chest is all puffed-out with confidence like he could possibly know how proud Della is of him, of all her kids, and he acts like he’s moving forward just because of her love.

Huey is just behind, skimming through his guidebook and nibbling the end of a pencil. He’s happy just to classify all the old stones making up these cave walls, but the idea of getting to add his own content to the JWG someday is an even more appealing prospect. Della glances back every so often, recalling being just like that, once upon a time, scribbling her thoughts down and trailing after Uncle Scrooge on adventures.

Scrooge himself is bringing up the rear, Louie and Webby bouncing around at his feet. The two of them are talking about the emerald statuette they’re looking for, about how much it might sparkle and shine. Her little dreamers carrying on as they go reminds her of herself and her twin, years ago, talking about the kinds of pretty jewels and powerful idols they’d hunt down. These days, those same treasures fill museum displays, some just decorating the house with memories that are only a little bittersweet, now that she’s home again.

She slows to a stop, holding out a hand to keep the kids from accidentally continuing. There’s a massive gash in the rocks here, a yawning hole in the tunnel that drops down further than she can see. 

“Careful.”

“Aw, man. How are we gonna get across?” Dewey scans their surroundings. The side walls are crumbling too, so no climbing them. Besides, there’s a trickle of water spilling out from the base of the rocks to their left, and she doesn’t want the kids slipping and getting hurt.

But she knows that the water isn’t coming from nowhere.

She gestures to the streams of water running over the floor beneath their feet, and Scrooge nods. 

“I dinnae think that’ll be a problem, lad.”

She hands her torch to Webby, whose smile betrays her. She knows what they’re doing already. A remarkable little mind, Della thinks. She won’t mind when her little girl becomes a better adventurer than she is.

Della takes a poke at the wall, finding the right stone with ease. There’s a terrible scraping sound, enough to make all the kids cover their ears, and the wall retracts, revealing a passage with a small stream running down the middle. Releasing the wall causes a little wave of water to roll over their feet, then dissipate over the stone. 

“Yes!”

This branch of the tunnels is lighter, and Della hardly needs her flaming light to lead the way. It’s not long before they emerge into a crossroads, paths splitting off in three directions, counting the way they came. She turns to Louie, testing his inherited gift. “Which way?”

“Less overgrown. Somebody’s been that way more recently.” He points to the left tunnel.

“That’s my boy.” She traipses on ahead, but the paths split off yet again not much further ahead. At this divide, there’s a small waterfall running down the rocks, coming from a gap too narrow for them to fit. The stream coming from it branches down both of the new tunnels and the one they’ve just emerged from. No wonder there’s water everywhere.

There’s also no signs to show them which way to take.

“The light is the same from each tunnel, and so’s the plant life,” Huey notices, taking notes on a fungus sprouting from the watery wall. “Which way, Mom?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” She glances down each path. They’re both falling apart, dark, and full of weird moss and mushrooms. They’re only different because one leads right, and one left.

“Maybe we could split up?” Dewey suggests. Scrooge agrees, “Aye, cannae hurt to cover more ground.”

“Why not? Alright, boys, which way?”

After a little deliberation, and more than a little bit of grumbling- oh, she knows how that feels- they pick the left passage. As they start off on their way, Webby grabs Scrooge’s hand and the two of them start on their way down the right. “Bye, guys! Be safe!”

“We will, Webs!” Dewey waves goodbye, and then darts ahead of the group, excited to get going. Huey follows, similarly eager, and Della starts off. Louie stays by her side, hands in his pocket. He knows they’ll get there eventually, and she walks at his pace to let him conserve energy. He’s never been the break-down-the-doors type his brothers often are, and she’s fine having one kid who won’t leap into trouble every chance he gets. Just… half the chances he gets.

The ones he knows he’s getting a payout for.

She sees so much of Uncle Scrooge in her baby. Huey’s more like Donald, cautious and easily frustrated, and of course Dewey takes after her. She loves that about them, that each of them is treading such a different path but they’ve already figured out the best way to succeed is to keep family close.

It took her… too long to figure that out.

The kids scamper on ahead, poking at weird plants and splashing in the crystal clear stream. She strides on along, head high, and alert for any dan--the ground trembles a little.

She almost feels like she’d imagined it. It was such a slight shake. But she waits a minute, keeps going, and it happens again. A little tremor beneath her toes, and then all of a sudden everything is shaking super violently.

This isn’t her first earthquake. She gathers the triplets close against a stable pillar of rock, stones neatly and securely stacked. She feels safe right here, watching dust clouds form off of the rocks a little ways away, but the ones nearest to them not nearly as crumbly.

Louie’s shaking, so she offers him the space beneath her right arm. He snuggles right in, clinging to her and wearing a face of “everything’s fine.” She holds him close, and pulls Huey in the other side. He leans against her, laying his head against her heart. She wraps her arm around him gently, reassuringly. Dewey climbs into her lap and she kisses his forehead, grateful that the tunnel’s light enough to see with her torch discarded on the floor and extinguished by the water there.

The shakes get worse for a few moments, and she sings the boys’ song to help. She’s not too afraid. They’re sheltered best they can be in an underground cavern, and it doesn’t seem to be a bad quake. A passing thought reminds her of Scrooge and Webby, but she’s sure the world’s greatest adventurer and his apprentice-of-sorts will be just fine.

“...I’ll face it all with you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we’re back. Yes. It was January when I started and now it’s August. It’s been quite a year.
> 
> In any case, here’s part two of the three. Fair tw for child injury, I will tag that onto the fic itself too. Anyway, enjoy, I hope you all like it!
> 
> ((EDIT(1.5.21): As I mentioned in the notes on the last one I've run through chapters 1 & 2 to do some minor grammar/punctuation edits after a hectic year escaping an abusive situation. Nothing to the content, though. Much thanks to all of you who've commented & kept me motivated to finish chapter 3, which is on the way!))

Scrooge isn't quite sure what they’re looking for in these tunnels and caves. Some moon-related statuette made of emerald that Della wanted to find. He’s never one to turn down the prospect of a good adventure, though, so here he is.

There’s slippery moss all around, and a fair amount of the rocks are slick with water. Mushrooms sprout up in crevices and cracks, a sort of living rot flourishing in the heavy wet air. This is, in many ways, an exact opposite of the man-made tunnels of his Klondike days. That was dry, rough, and hot, where this is humid, smooth, and chilling.

But Scrooge McDuck isn’t bothered by terrain. He’s not one to let a split in the path slow him down, either, when Della and the boys take to one fork and he and Webby to the other. He’s an adventurer, to his core, and nothing can stop Scrooge McDuck! He powers on.

His perky pink partner proceeds too, a skip in her step. She doesn’t talk much, nothing to say she hasn’t told him already. For now, anyway. She’ll think of more to talk about by the time they get home again. She just bounces on ahead.

They walk for a little bit, and the tunnel slopes upward. Scrooge is nearly ready to ask his small sidekick to pause and give his aching knees a rest when the tunnel opens up. Beyond it is a small cavern with a high roof, and the ground smooths out. The air is better ventilated here, and he takes a deep breath of it while leaning on his cane. As they enter, he realizes that’s because the roof has started to crumble, leaving holes in the thin ground above their heads. Moonlight is streaming in and lighting the area up.

“Aw, I think we went the wrong way,” Webby kicks a small pebble across the cavern. “We’re too close to the surface for the treasure to be around here.”

“Might be, lass.” There’s an exit on the other side of the cavern, and Scrooge wanders over to take a glance down it. He sticks his torch into the entrance to light the darkness, but it doesn’t seem to drop back downward. He looks back across the room to Webby, who is staring up at the ceiling above them. “I think we ought to double back and rejoin—”

Before he can finish, the ground begins to quake. It’s weak at first, but quickly escalates to strong shaking. He’s almost knocked off his feet, and takes to leaning on his cane to keep balanced. The roof, being thin as it is, starts to fall apart in small chunks.

“Web—Webby!” Dust and dirt starts to fill the air, and he chokes on it calling out to her.

“Unca Scrooge!” She yells, and darts around a falling chunk of dirt and rocks. She holds her little hands above her head, trying to shield herself, and he tosses his torch aside, taking a few steps toward her. A particularly big rock comes falling down between them, and he hears her cry out.

He skirts around the rock to find her on her hands and knees, coughing up dust. Another quake almost knocks him off his feet, so he sits down heavily beside her as it dissipates.

“Are ye alright, lass?”

“...No, Unca Scrooge,” she whimpers, sort of sitting up beside him weakly. After the roof’s collapse, there’s much more moonlight, and in it he can see she’s trying to keep off one knee. He reaches for her, pulling her into his lap.

He waits for a moment, holding her to his chest. After a few bated breaths, he’s satisfied the earthquake is over. He focuses his attention onto his niece. “Let me see.”

“I fell onto something sharp,” she murmurs and holds out one arm. It’s scraped up from her elbow to the heel of her hand. And her leg on the same side is cut quite deeply. He’s got a small first aid kit in his pack, but this is much more than a couple band-aids could repair. He can tell just by looking she’s going to need at least a few stitches on that leg.

Bentina’s going to have his head.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he murmurs. He’s quick to take his pack off, reaching for what little supplies he’s got. He has enough antiseptic spray to clean her wounds, and he wraps her leg with the little bit of gauze he has. He puts the biggest bandaids he has over her arm, but it’s really not enough. Huey and Della have the rest of the supplies.

“How does that feel, lass?”

“Better. Thanks,” she murmurs. She sighs. “I’m sorry, Unca Scrooge. I didn’t mean to ruin the whole adventure.”

“Webby, darlin’,” he tilts her head so she’ll look up at him. Her eyes are glistening with tears and he knows she’s trying to be brave about the pain. Poor girl. He wishes he knew how to tell her she should never feel like she has to pretend, wishes he could tell her about all the times he’s been hurt on adventures even as someone so experienced. Instead he opts for comfort in the purest way he knows.

“Yer my greatest adventure, ye know that? No treasures will ever compare to havin’ ye safe and happy.”

“Really?” She sniffles, and rubs at her teary cheek with her uninjured hand. When he nods, she seems to accept that, but she still asks, “You're not mad I got myself hurt?”

“Ye dinnae do it on purpose. Besides, adventures are dangerous. Ye come to expect a bit ‘a gettin’ hurt every now and then.”

Webby leans against his chest a bit, obviously aching, but she’s looking at him like he’s hung the stars in her sky. He kisses the top of her head, and smiles at her, hoping she knows he loves her more than anything in the world.

He glances around the cavern. There’s a sizeable pile of dirt and rocks over the tunnel leading forward, and he’d barely make it down the slope they came up on his own. Not to mention he’s going to have to carry Webby—he won’t make her try and walk on that leg—so the way they came in is out.

And then he looks up.

The night sky is sprawling above them, stars aplenty and a glowing moon hanging right in the middle. It’s too high to climb out safely, but it’s a way for someone to come rescuing them. And if there’s nothing overhead anymore, their phones will probably work.

He can’t call Della and the boys, they’ll still be deep in the tunnels. He can just hope they’re alright after the quake. But Launchpad should still be waiting in the plane.

He dials his flip-phone with one hand, still holding Webby close, and waits. It rings once, typical. Twice, still normal. A third ring, and he begins to worry. A fourth… and then it goes to voicemail.

He doesn’t leave a message. His name on the screen will be enough for Launchpad to call back. That is, if he’s safe and able to.

Without any other options, all Scrooge can do is keep Webby close and hope for help to arrive.


End file.
